I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr Mike Cieplak, Investor Relations Officer for McDonald's Corporation. Mr. Cieplak Sadler, you may begin.

Mike Cieplak

Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. With me on the call this morning are President and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Easterbrook, and Chief Financial Officer, Kevin Ozan. Today's conference call is being webcast live and is also being recorded for replay on our website. Before I turn it over to Steve, I want to remind everyone that the forward-looking statements in our earnings release in 8-K filing also apply to our comments.

Both documents are available on our website as our reconciliations of any non-GAAP financial measures mentioned on today's call with their corresponding GAAP measures.

And now, I'll turn it over to Steve.

Steve Easterbrook

Good morning. We are pleased to be speaking to you today from our corporate headquarters in downtown Chicago, where we recently celebrated our one year anniversary in this contemporary urban facility. Returning to Chicago was a deliberate move to get closer to our customers and the trend shaping business and society today. Our new facility was designed to be a modern and inspiring environment, a catalyst for our evolving culture.

A move is also a metaphor for the momentum we're seeing across our business. Momentum has been building since we first launched our turnaround plan. As we've recently passed the full year mark, I thought it would be important to spend a few minutes reflecting on our journey. Back in May, 2015, I announced our initial steps to reset and rebuild our business, including our threefold priorities of driving operational growth, returning excitement to our brand and unlocking financial value.

At that time, we were keenly aware that the pace of change inside McDonald's was being eclipsed by the pace of change outside our business. We knew we had to evolve with our changing market and consumer dynamics, and we knew incremental progress wasn't going to cut it. Returning to a growth company was going to require big, bold steps and greater personal accountability. We knew success will be determined by the fast beating the slow, by choosing progress over perfection and moving with a sense of urgency. So, we set out on the journey to become faster, smarter and more responsive to changing consumer expectations. We restructured to be closer to customers and faster at the point of impact, we re-franchised the drive growth and bring greater insight on a local level. We increase accountability and financial discipline and return cash to shareholders. Most importantly, we returned to operating growth. Indeed, within two years, we established a strong foundation, one that was fit for purpose and broaden the business to a place where we could begin accelerating growth again. That led to the launch of our velocity growth plan in March